KPMG's Italian business has purchased 3,500 BlackBerry 10 smartphones, and revealed plans to fully migrate its smartphone real estate to BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.
Financial services firm KPMG describes the struggling Canadian phone company - which is up for sale - as "the platform of choice" for its business, and calls itself a "long time customer".
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"Every day our professionals need to share confidential information and need a reliable smartphone with strong security, and the flexibility to meet different working needs," said Davide Grassano, a lead partner in IT at KPMG Milan.
"With BlackBerry 10 we have found the best solution in terms of usability, security, connectivity and price. The BlackBerry solution allows our users to have access to shared files and other internal resources, while also working to prevent the accidental leakage of business documents and attachments."
BlackBerry's South East Europe managing director, Alberto Acito, followed the announcement by stating that "more than 25,000 BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 commercial and test servers have already been installed globally, including within many of the world's top organisations".
The news from KPMG is encouraging for BlackBerry, but may do little to reverse the fortunes of a company that is struggling against the rising tide of BYOD.
Many UK IT managers have told Computing that, while BES 10 certainly remains a secure choice, workers now usually require the flexibility to use their own mobile devices on an enterprise network, and have little interest in adopting a BlackBerry device in order to take advantage of the platforms's USPs, such as the data siloing function BlackBerry Balance, which only works with BB10 devices.
The company's latest BB10 handsets – including the touchscreen-led BlackBerry Z10 and QWERTY keyboard-based Q10 and Q5 – have also been criticised for being overpriced, as well as sporting undernourished app stores compared to their iOS and Android-based rivals.
BlackBerry has recently started taking out full-page press advertisements in an attempt to reassure the world it is "here to stay".
